In Which A Musical Might Be A Sign Of A Forthcoming Recession

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

At time of writing it's Friday evening, in fact my daughter's birthday, and as a birthday present for my daughter, wife and mother they are at the Wales Millenium Centre watching a performance of the musical Crazy For You.

When I booked the tickets in July it seemed to be the perfect extra present for them all. Given that it is a) a musical b) has two winners of Strictly Come Dancing in it. Plus as it turned out subsequently that I can spend the evening watching Portuguese football on the new FreeSports channel in peace. A win for everybody.

The seats I will say now were almost the cheapest. Budgets being tight and all that. So they were to be seated at the gods. But they would have a grandstand view of the proceedings and for all three of them it wasn't their main present, just an added extra.

That then is July. So imagine my surprise receiving an email from the Millenium Centre early this week saying that to provide "an intimate atmosphere" they offered that the three women in my life were to be seated closer to the stage. In other words they could not sell enough tickets and didn't want the cast performing in front of disheartening swathes of empty seats. Of course I accepted the offer.

Which of course brings us to the question how could a musical with a well known personalities find itself in this position on a Friday evening? Monday,Tuesday might have been more understandable. But Friday?

Well what I'm going to say next is purely my opinion and based on nothing else. For all I know I might just be talking out of my backside having put two and two together and made five. Still here I go...

For me there are two possible explanations. One is that the musical is just rubbish, that the cast could not sing and dance their way out of a paper bag and when they return I'm going to be surroundsound nagged at by three generations of my family. But I don't think so...

The second explanation is that when a recession begins people start cutting back on the "luxuries". When previous recession began I remember on the radio a cobbler phoned up to say that he knew there was an economic downturn because more people came in to get their shoes repaired rather than buy a new pair.

A high tech version of that was a report I remember at the time discussing the effects of the previous recession on the West Wales seaside town of Tenby. One of the people who profited from the situation, for the same reason as the cobbler, was a PC Repairman.

Since summer has gone (hardly was here in the first place) a trip to the theatre, even on a Friday, might become a luxury. True there was The Addams Family a few weeks before, but that was the sort of thing that could appeal to all ages. Crazy For You wouldn't appeal to all the family. If you cut "luxuries" from your budget then going to the theatre would be easily one of the first things that would go.

As I will stress again I might be completely wrong. But as we enter winter and longer nights approaches it might be worth noting of anything else suggesting that the long predicted downturn is not just occurring but starting to have an effect on people's daily lives

Until the next time.

How Bruce Chatwin, Brian Aldiss and the NRL Fared In The Rainy Sunday Test

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Although my daughter has one more day of the school holidays left to go but let's face it the Monday doesn't really count) the wife had plans for Sunday.

"Let's go to Tenby" she said on Saturday.

I shrugged. Been there done that. As I've said before in this blog I'm not really a beach person.But then again I'd no real alternative option so fine.

However it's now Sunday morning....and it's raining. It was one of those Sundays (wherever in the world you are) that aside from getting any necessary provisions you know from the moment you get up that you're staying in.

There's now a channel called FreeSports ....yippee to that...where you can watch....surprise,surprise sports without having to pay for it. As mentioned before because of the internet connection where we are renting at the moment I've had to drop BT Sports. This was good news for the wife and daughter as it meant the number of programmes I'd recorded dropped to one (Professor T). Now however I'm back DVR'ing as if my life depended on it. So they find they're watching something and then the screen suddenly changes to an Australian rugby league game. Oh how they love that

Ah yes Australian Rugby League. The NRL. A season about to go into it's final stages. I'm Ok with the sport. Football will always come first but don't dislike it. So on Sunday morning watched a recording of a few games. The most important for me being the North Queensland Cowboys versus the Brisbane Broncos.

This game, being the first to watch was going to decide which NRL club I was going to follow. But. even though it might mean that I wouldn't be able to watch them for the rest of the season I'm no glory seeker. So whoever lost would have, for what it's worth, my support.

Well.....go get them Cowboys from now on then.

I enjoyed the games of course having the advantage that not living in Australia meant I wouldn't know the result in advance and could watch them later. There is a possibility dem Cowboys will move into the final eight at time of writing but I don't know and am not finding out before I finish watching this week's games

In the afternoon though wife/daughter wanted to watch movies. In particular Evita starring Madonna. Wasn't interested in that (though it raises the question whatever happened to Jimmy Nail?) so picked up and continued to read In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin.

Now I haven't finished the book yet. But those of you hoping that I would be somehow transported into the wildlands of Argentina and wax lyrical about the prose will be disappointed. I don't like travel books where the natives are treated like exhibits for the examination of the writer. He is not superior.

Furthermore the chapters are short,very short, one, two, three pages long. Tells a story and moves on when you're sure he could have got into more detail.

You know what? It might have been a better read as a blog (before his time I know).

When the skies grew darker I turned to my Kindle and it's backlight for further reading. However Charles Dickens will  have to wait. Amazon always throw offers at you when you've bought a Kindle. Normally I can ignore them. But recently they've offered deals on works by the recently deceased writer Brian Aldiss who I wrote about recently. Well I was tempted and bought a complete set of the short stories he wrote in the fifties as well as a complete set of his essays. Not only that but cannot resist reading them (starting with the essays) now thus jumping the queue of the great ebook unread.

Will chat about it when I've finished. All I'll say now is that I'm not disappointed.

It's Monday as I'm writing this. It's raining...but I have work coming up.

Until the next time.